Sunday, February 22, 2015

writes a real tear-jerker
here, so grab your box of Kleenex and prepare to meet one of the many who influenced this professional woman, wife, and mother of three.

Read more about

Amy at the end of this post.

Circle of Life by Amy Wallace

“Hey kid!” I can still
hear his booming, gruff, yet tender voice. The voice of Ray Donald Jones, RD,
or Don, but just Grandpa to me.

In my upper elementary
years, he was the lunchroom monitor at my school. That didn't last very long. I
think he called a kid a piss ant. That was one of his favorite things to say. I’m
sure his loud, gruff tone didn't sit well with the grade school parents!

I love this picture because it shows his sharp-dressed
style, fabuloushair, and him looking at me with such adoration.

Each summer Grandpa would come
out and help with harvest at our farm. His job was to drive the wheat trucks.
When I first learned to drive, I did the driving and he was my co-pilot. He
cussed me up one side and down the other about how fast I was driving. He was
probably right.

My husband recalls a funny
memory from when he was a boy. Sean and some buddies were hanging out at the
local gas station where Grandpa worked. The boys were looking at the magazines
when he surprised them shouting, “Hey you kids, this ain’t a [gosh darn] library!”
Oh Grandpa, he wasn't known for his grace or tact!

My favorite photo of us is
framed in an old rusty horseshoe. When I was competing at Miss Kansas, he had
a gorgeous bouquet of flowers delivered to me, and in the arrangement was a horseshoe for luck. Included with it was a card addressed to "Amy Graber Futere Miss Kansas." Spelling wasn't his strong-suit, but I loved it and still have the envelope today. The frame holds a photo of us after the parade at the meet and greet. There wasn't a more proud Grandpa in the place!

top picture: my favorite picture with Grandpa Don in the lucky horseshoe framebottom picture: proof of his spelling skills

One afternoon I was
painting my bedroom. I had the door closed so I could paint behind it. He threw
the door open and marched straight in stepping on the tray of paint right at
the edge flipping it over. Paint went on the wall, the door, his pants and
shoes, the carpet—everywhere. Graceful he was not.

He came off as pretty
rough and tough, but he had a sensitive side. If I ever stayed home sick from
school, he would stop to check on me. When I moved to college and he couldn't see me all the time, he called just to check on me.

Once married, we moved to
Garden City. Grandpa decided to send us valentines in the mail. How sweet! But
he didn't put enough postage on them, so we had to go to the post office and
pay to get them. We had fun teasing him about that every chance we got.

the Valentine's Day debacle

In April of 1997, I was
student teaching and we celebrated Grandparent’s Day. Grandpa came to school
with me. This is one of my last good memories of a healthy man. I was so proud
to have him there, and he was so proud to have been invited.

I don’t recall the exact
time I was told he had cancer, but I specifically remember when I realized he wouldn't get better. They were moving a hospital bed into his house. This was it. It was coming to an end,
and there was nothing that could change that.

As we celebrated Christmas
in ’97, we knew it would be his last. He was thin, weak, and tired.He gave my mom a tree to plant in her yard,
and I knew that he knew. The end was near.

It was February. We
started a round-the-clock vigil at his bedside. In anticipation of his upcoming
birthday, we requested a card shower. It was a treat each day to retrieve the
cards and read them to him.

On a Wednesday, I emptied
the mailbox mid-morning. Once again, our tiny town didn't disappoint. The
box was full of birthday greetings. I sat next to his bed and read each one. His
eyes were closed, his breathing loud and rattly. Suddenly we realized the mail
had just been delivered. The cards we just read were from the previous day. Now
we had a whole new batch to go through!

We read the new batch of cards
and his breathing got slower and farther apart. And then, just as gentle as a
soft breeze, he was gone. And there was peace. He left that sick body
with his family at his side. There was no more
suffering. It was finished. It was 1:18 pm on his 74th
birthday, February 18, 1998.

4 Generations:

my mom, Peggy; me,
the baby; Nellie Jones and her son Don, my grandpa

If someone had asked me if
I wanted to be in the room as he passed from this life to the next, I’m not
sure what my answer would have been. But as God must have intended it, I was. And
I will forever be grateful for that experience. Death was not scary. It
was quiet. It was peace. It was sacred. It was a moment, one last moment, that
could be ours. Something we shared. I was there for him, and he was there for
me. And I will cherish it for the rest of my life.

About a month after his
passing, Sean and I learned we were pregnant with our first child. When she came
into this world nine months later, we gave her his name, Macy Dawn.
He would have loved her compassionate heart and fiery spirit. She wears his
name well, but that is a story for another day.

Does Grandpa Don remind
you of anyone in your family? Have you
ever had the opportunity to be with someone as they moved from this life into
the next?

About Amy Wallace

It is my great
privilege to be a guest writer for my good friend and colleague, Melodie Hofer
Harris. During the summer
of 1994, I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life. I had just completed two
years of college at K-State, and the love of my life (now my husband of 20
years) had graduated and was moving on to the real world. I wasn't sure where I fit into that picture, or for that matter, the big picture of life. To help pay
for my schooling, I was competing in the Miss America Circuit.

That summer I
participated in the Miss Cheney Lake Pageant held annually each July in Cheney
as part of the Sedgwick County Fair. I was getting to know my home-hostess,
Paula Voth. As I explained my lack of direction and uncertainty about school,
work, and life in general, she encouraged me to apply
for a position that was open at her school. I filed my application with Superintendent
Don Wells and landed a job which changed the path of my entire future. I
was hired as a teacher’s aide at Cheney Jr. High where Melodie Hofer was a
teacher. Two years later when I married, Melodie presented me with a handmade
crosstitched “Wallace” that still hangs on my refrigerator. In 2001, I
returned to Cheney to work as the curriculum director and three years later,
became the principal at Cheney Middle School. Today, Melodie and I remain co-workers,
but more than that, friends.